Download Musical interpretation: philosophical and

Musical interpretation: philosophical and practical
issues
MARISSA SILVERMAN
New York University, USA
Editor’s introduction
Performance is one of the core areas of music teaching and learning. Although many take
it to be quite straightforward and pragmatic, performance is an area that encompasses
many important practical, philosophical, aesthetical and psychological issues. In this very
poetic and rich article, Silverman considers some of these issues in order to discuss musical
interpretation. Her purpose is to examine the nature of musical interpretation in light of
philosophical themes borrowed from literary theory and criticism.
Silverman opens by suggesting that there are two divergent views of musical
performance currently in vogue: a formalist one and an open (or subjective) one, as well as
some interpretive stances in between them. From these definitions she moves on to discuss
the ways in which the teaching and evaluating of performance have been viewed by music
education. This discussion serves as background for Silverman to introduce readers to a
theory proposed by literature scholar Louise Rosenblatt, which, according to her, has many
parallels in music interpretation.
A thorough explanation of Rosenblatt’s theory, known as transactional theory, is
provided. According to Silverman, the theory is based on three main principles that may be
applied to musical interpretation: (1) text is a composition of printed signs that point to
something beyond themselves; (2) meaning ‘flows’ from the reader–text interaction; and (3)
readers construct meaning by drawing from previous experiences.
Silverman’s analogy between Rosenblatt’s theory and musical interpretation uses as
arguments excerpts of narratives by expert performers. These examples certainly bring a very
vivid dimension to the article – something that readers who are unfamiliar with philosophical music education research will certainly appreciate. These examples also sustain her
interpretive view of musical interpretation. On that note, she argues that interpretation is
more than ‘an aural photocopy of a score’. It is the act of ‘bringing one’s whole being –
intellectual, social, cultural, artistic, physical, emotional and personal – into the performing
event’.
Music educators are likely to enjoy reading this paper and to reflect on many issues. The
article is of an inquisitive nature, and as such, Silverman asks many important questions that
are central to music education: What are the processes of and conditions for musical
performance-as-interpretation? How can these processes and conditions be recognized and
realized in music education?
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MUSIC EDUCATION Copyright © 2007 International Society for Music Education
Vol 25(2) 101–117 [(200708)25:2] 10.1177/0255761407079950 http://ijm.sagepub.com
102 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MUSIC EDUCATION 25(2)
Silverman reflects on these questions and also provides some clear implications for
performance teaching and practice. These implications are very important for music
education, because implications for practice are not always drawn upon philosophical
papers. Needless to say, this is a paper that is worth reading. And commenting upon.
Abstract
This article builds an interdisciplinary perspective on the nature of western classical music
performance by combining concepts from literary theory, music philosophy and music
education philosophy. The article concludes with practical proposals for the education of
music performers.
Key words
aesthetic, efferent, musical expression, musical meaning, performance, transactionalism
Given its long history and ubiquity, one might reasonably assume that all questions about
western classical performance have been asked and answered. In fact, there is considerable
evidence to the contrary. For example, a wide variety of publications in music education,
music psychology and music philosophy during the last 15 years offer teachers, performers
and scholars competing views on the nature and teaching of western classical performance.
At one end of the spectrum, some scholars, performers and teachers view performing as
a situation in which a performer only sounds out a notated score in strict accordance with
a composer’s instructions. On this view, a performer (or conductor) ‘reads’ the formal dimensions of a score (e.g. notated pitches, rhythms, dynamics) and produces the written score
for the contemplation of an audience. Advocates of this concept of performance emphasize
‘letting the score speak for itself’; a performer is merely the ‘servant’ of the composer.
Music philosopher Stephen Davies (2004a) seems to support this view: ‘Performance calls
for concentration on the business of sounding the work. The player needs to focus, not to
emote and not to simulate experiences she does not have’ (p. 2). Music psychologists who
take this strict line of thinking about performing usually concentrate their studies on the
technical skills, practice time and/or ‘talent’ required to sound out musical scores (e.g.
Chaffin & Lemieux, 2004; Sloboda, 1985). Let us call this the objective or formalist view of
performing.
The New Harvard Dictionary (Randel, 1986) moves one step beyond a formalist view:
The boundary between notation and performance . . . is not as clear as it has sometimes
seemed, for the notation of every period is in some degree incomplete and functions within
a set of expectations or conventions that guides (or guided) its realization. Thus, in its
narrowest sense, interpretation depends on historically informed taste transmitted (most
often in notation) to the performer . . . (p. 399)
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the open or subjective view. Writers, performers
and teachers of this persuasion believe performers have ‘poetic license’ to interpret and
realize a score based almost entirely on their unique feelings or desires. In an interview with
James Briscoe (1999), Pierre Boulez remarked on the subjective view in relation to the
performance practices of some 19th-century pianists: ‘Listen, for example, to what certain
pianists were doing with Chopin – there were certain traditions of romanticism that were
truly terrifying’ (p. 187).
Silverman Musical interpretation 103
Along the spectrum between these two poles we find various positions that give more or
less weight to the view that a musical score (or ‘text’) is an incomplete or inexact record of,
or a guide to, a composer’s intentions. Underlying these intermediate views is the belief that
a score cannot contain a composer’s full range of intentions (conscious and subconscious),
let alone the full range of meanings a work can express. Depending on their views about
these considerations, scholars, performers and teachers hold that performers have the right
and/or responsibility to interpret a score’s instructions, and uncover and communicate its
meanings, in accordance with a range of variables (structural, expressive, referential,
historical styles and so forth). For example, and in contradiction to the formalist view Davies
(2004a) expressed elsewhere (cited above), he offers this:
Performance involves not just the preservation of the music’s sense and structure, it also
requires the player somehow to engage personally and on the spot with all that, so his
performance counts truly as a personal statement of his, made at the time of playing.
(Davies, 2004b, p. 183)
In sum, and in addition to formalist and subjectivist extremes, commentators, teachers and
performers hold a variety of interpretive stances on performing.
Similarly, scholars in music education differ widely in the attention they give to
performance and in their concepts of its nature and value. For example, books by
philosophers Keith Swanwick (1988, 1994), Estelle Jorgensen (1997, 2003) and Bennett
Reimer (1970, 1989) are generally vague about the nature and teaching of performance. For
example, Jorgensen (1997) touches briefly on skill development and ‘interpretation’ as
something that is formed ‘musically and culturally’ (p. 36). Swanwick (1994) goes slightly
further in his discussion of criteria for evaluating performances in terms of ‘technical,
expressive and structural control’ (p. 109) and the need for student performers to develop
‘a plan’ or a ‘blueprint’ of the work they want to produce. And, when he suggests the use
of metaphors and mental images in teaching performance, Swanwick restricts these
strategies to teaching technical know-how. Reimer’s concept of musical expression (1970,
1989) in performance is limited to giving students opportunities to make decisions about
production issues: for example, how loud or soft (or how short or long) tones should be (p.
191). Reimer (1989) fails to discuss musical interpretation. Indeed, and because his
philosophy depends on the ‘absolute expressionist’ theory of Langer (1942, 1953), Reimer
(1989) denies that composers and performers are able or should attempt to communicate
emotional or conceptual messages (p. 59). He argues that music cannot ‘communicate’: the
value of music is ‘inside’ the structural relationships of musical works (hence the term
‘absolute’ expressionism), not in anything ‘outside’ these structures: ‘Absolute Expressionism
insists that meaning and value are internal; they are functions of the artistic qualities
themselves [formal, structural elements] and how they are organized’ (Reimer, 1989, p. 27).
Accordingly, performers have little leeway to interpret a musical work; they must adhere
rather closely to the craft and technique it takes to realize the structure of a work. And if
‘imagination’ or ‘sensitivity’ is allowed, as Reimer (2003) now admits, how do we know this
is happening if meaning and value are ‘inside’ the formal elements of a work?
The purpose of my discussion is to examine the nature of musical interpretation using
philosophical themes from literary theory and criticism, as well as selected ideas from expert
performers’ narratives. In offering support for an interpretive view of performance, I will ask:
What are the processes of and conditions for musical performance-as-interpretation? How
can these processes and conditions be recognized and realized in music education?
I hasten to add that my effort to illuminate aspects of music interpretation and
performance through literary theory and criticism differs from what other writers have done.
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That is, I am not attempting to compare music and language in terms of phonetics, syntax
or semantics; and I will not be discussing musical works as non-discursive symbols of feeling
(e.g. Langer, 1942, 1953), or music as a ‘language of the emotions’ (Cooke, 1959). As I
hope to show now, I will be attempting to do something quite different. I will attempt to
unpack and analyze the concept of musical interpretation with the help of insights from
Louise Rosenblatt’s transactional theory of reader response.
Rosenblatt’s transactional theory
As far back as 1938, Louise Rosenblatt (1905–2005) was probing the importance of the
‘reader’ in her classrooms. She rejected the so-called New Criticism movement of the late
1930s (through the 1950s) that rested on the belief that ‘the text’ itself is central to the
nature and value of literature. According to the New Critics, teachers should teach English
literature students how to analyze a novel or poem through concise and attentive analyses
of the text. By emphasizing concise and attentive analyses, the New Critics meant to
dissuade teachers and students from expressing their personal views about a text’s
meanings, feelings or associations.
During the 1960s and early 1970s, a shift occurred in the literature classroom. The focus
of attention moved from the text as ‘authority’ to the roles of the readers and their
relationship with the text. When teachers of literature turned their attention to the minds of
their students, they began to understand and apply what Rosenblatt had been proposing
for many years. Teachers began to see the relevance of Rosenblatt’s thesis that a reader’s
engagement and involvement with a text is what ‘makes’ poems. In other words, a poem is
not something that exists on the printed page; it is something that happens at the
intersection – at the joining – of a reader and a text. Rosenblatt (1938) explains:
The special meaning, and more particularly, the submerged associations that these words
and images have for the individual reader will largely determine what the work
communicates to him. The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past
events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment, and a
particular physical condition. These and many other elements in a never-to-be-duplicated
combination determine her response to the particular contribution of the text. (pp. 30–31)
At this point it is important to explain three key principles of Rosenblatt’s transactional
theory. The first principle concerns Rosenblatt’s distinction between a text and a poem. To
Rosenblatt, a text is a matter of ‘printed signs’ that serve as ‘symbols’ that (potentially) point
to ‘something beyond themselves’. Her concept of a ‘poem’ is completely different: a poem
is an event in time that comes into existence when a reader ‘meets’ a text. A poem is not
something that exists a priori on a page; it is something readers construct, moment-tomoment, when they activate the marks on a page (of any type of literary work).
Rosenblatt’s second principle is that meaning flows from the reader–text transaction
process. Rosenblatt views the reader and the text as partners in the interpretive, meaningmaking process. From this perspective, readers do not ‘find’ the meaning of a work in the
‘text itself’, nor can they ‘locate’ the meanings of the verbal symbols in themselves alone.
The meanings involve both the written text and what readers bring to it.
A corollary of Rosenblatt’s second principle is that the same reader can ‘make many
different poems’ in relationship to/with the same text, because a reader’s preoccupations,
moods, needs and experiences are always changing. This stance gives readers permission to
approach texts with an open mind – with an expectation that their personal reader–text
Silverman Musical interpretation 105
transaction processes have the potential to yield a plethora of interpretations over time. In
this view, it is very possible, and likely, that a change in circumstances – time, place, personal
knowledge, feelings – will yield a different poem ‘in’/for the reader.
Not surprisingly, Rosenblatt’s views clashed with conventional (or formalist) teaching
practices of her day, which held that an author’s text presents fixed meanings. Thus, the
teacher’s role was to authoritatively reveal and assist students to uncover these implicit
meanings. In fact, post-Romantics became immersed in the search for and revelation of
‘intent’ in all manner of texts. For example, New Critics, such as Wimsatt and Beardsley
(1958), wrote about the distinction between an author’s intention and their accomplishment in the text.
This is not to say that authors and texts have a second-class status in Rosenblatt’s theory.
Not at all. Authors create texts, and we must never underestimate the role or value of the
text. Without the text, the reader is not prompted and guided to make meaning. What
Rosenblatt is saying, however, is that once a text is sent out into the world, it is no longer
in the author’s domain. The words (symbols) on the page do not have any meaning until a
reader activates them and lives through them. Thus, whatever authors may state about their
intentions, interpreters must ‘read’ and apply such statements cautiously. Nicholas Karolides
(2000) agrees: ‘As compositional theory establishes – and writers themselves often attest –
composing is not altogether conscious; the subconscious also operates during the
composing process . . . the author may not be aware of revealed meanings’ (p. 12).
Rosenblatt’s third principle explains how readers make meaning. This principle depends
on a crucial distinction between two reading stances she calls the efferent stance and the
aesthetic stance. These stances determine what kinds of meanings readers construct and
how they do so. According to Rosenblatt, a reader of (say) a newspaper, encyclopedia
article, scientific text or cookbook evokes the ‘work’ in the sense that they must draw upon
past experiences to construct meaning from the coded symbols on a page. But if this is so,
then the question remains: What is the difference between a ‘poem’ and an encyclopedia
article?
Basically, the difference lies in the type of activity or relationship that a reader applies
(knowingly or unknowingly) to a given text. More precisely, in a non-aesthetic or efferent
reading, readers focus their attention on data that remain important once the reading event
is over, such as the information a worried mother needs to know when she realizes her child
has accidentally swallowed a poison. The mother would read the label on the bottle as
quickly as possible, trying to decipher the necessary practical information. In her situation,
the mother’s (reader’s) personal responses to the label (‘text’) are unimportant. The key
factor is that the reader’s attention and response to the printed words or symbols are
directed outward, so to speak, toward concepts to be retained, or actions to be performed
after the reading. Rosenblatt calls these types of readings efferent. An efferent reading is the
act of reading analytically to abstract information or ideas that will be useful once the
reading is over.
In contrast, an aesthetic reading is primarily concerned with what happens during the
reading process, with a focus on how a reader lives through the literary work of art.
Though like the efferent reader of a law text, say, the reader of Frost’s ‘Birches’ must
decipher the images or concepts or assertions that the words point to, he also pays
attention to the associations, feelings, attitudes, and ideas that these words and their
referents arouse within him. ‘Listening to’ himself, he synthesizes these elements into a
meaningful structure. In aesthetic reading, the reader’s attention is centered directly on
what he is living through during his relationship with that particular text. (Rosenblatt, 1994,
pp. 24–25; italics in original)
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Note, again, that the differences in these two stances do not necessarily lie in the text itself,
but in the attitude the reader adopts and the activities they carry out in relation to the text.
Stanley Fish (1980) agrees: ‘It is not that the presence of poetic qualities compels a certain
kind of attention but that the paying of a certain kind of attention results in the emergence
of poetic qualities’ (p. 326).
At the efferent (or formalist) end of the spectrum, readers are not concerned with any
personal or qualitative aspects of their response to the verbal symbols. Their focus is on the
information they need from these symbols.
At the aesthetic end of the spectrum, the readers’ primary purpose is fulfilled during the
reading event as they concentrate their attention on the reading experience they are living
through. Such concentration permits them to experience a wide range of responses that
they generate in their moment-to-moment transactions with the text; the literary work of
art is what enters into their awareness due to their personal construction of the materials
they select, understand and weave together from their experience of the text.
Interestingly, Rosenblatt (1994) describes the entire reading transaction as a performance. When readers engage themselves in the journey of ‘making a poem’ and finding
meaning through the symbols on the printed page, they are ‘above all, a performer, in the
same sense that a pianist performs a sonata, reading it from the text’ (p. 28). Rosenblatt
(1994) continues in this musical vein (and inserts a comment by Aaron Copland):
[A]n even better analogy for the reenactment of the text is the musical performance. The
text of a poem or of a novel or a drama is like a musical score. The artist who created the
score – composer or poet – has set down notations for others, to guide them in the
production of a work of art. Some might say that the performer, whether musical or literary,
has only to be transparent, to obediently hit the exact notes decreed by the author of the
work, but a contemporary composer reminds us of ‘the preponderant role of the personality
of the performer . . . honesty compels me to admit that the written page is only an
approximation; it’s only an indication of how close the composer was able to come in
transcribing her exact thoughts on paper. Beyond that point the interpreter is on her own.’1
Moreover, in the literary reading, even the keyboard on which the performer plays is –
himself. (p. 14)
Rosenblatt’s theory and musical interpretation
Since Rosenblatt utilizes the comparison between reading a poem and performing a musical
score, let us do the same. And just as Rosenblatt made important distinctions between a
text and a poem, let us contrast the differences between a musical score and ‘the music’.
Music education philosopher David Elliott (1995) emphasizes a key aspect of the distinction:
‘although a written score stipulates many features of a composed work and therefore
guarantees its basic identity across times and places, the being of a composed work is not
the same as a musical score because scores are seen and not heard’ (p. 201). Of course, as
most classical musicians know very well (and as many laypeople do not), most well-educated
musicians can hear (and/or are trained to hear) music notation ‘in their heads’ (and, of
course, some are better at this than others, most notably Mozart, Mahler, Beethoven and
Messiaen). But I digress. The next and more complicated point I am aiming at is articulated
clearly by Elliott (1995):
Performing is not a matter of re-creating a composer’s written intentions as obediently as
possible. For what a composer hears in his or her musical imagination and commits to
paper is not a real performance. As a result, what a composer writes in a score is not the
Silverman Musical interpretation 107
final word. In a real performance, decisions are being made and completed (successfully or
not) such that every detail of the performance is determinate. In contrast, a composer’s
imaginary hearing (or ‘audiation’ [or inner hearing]) of her own work requires no such
concrete decision-making. In other words, an imagined performance of a composition is
indeterminate. (p. 166)
In summary, the sonic event we call ‘music’ is, like a poem, an event in time; it is constructed
and experienced in the mind of listeners or performers when they ‘meet’ a notated score
(text). Ethnomusicologist Christopher Small (1998) agrees: ‘Music is not a thing at all but an
activity, something that people do. The apparent thing “music” is a figment, an abstraction
of the action, whose reality vanishes as soon as we examine it too closely’ (p. 2). Small posits
that there is no such thing as ‘music’ and that to ask the age-old question ‘What does music
mean?’ is futile because it is unanswerable. Small asserts that the activities ‘we call music,
whose meanings have to be grasped in time as it flies . . . cannot be fixed on paper’ (p. 3).
So, Small turns the question ‘What does music mean?’ into the question ‘What is the
meaning of the work (or these works) of music?’ But while his solution (altering the
question) assists our critical thinking, more reflecting needs to be done. For if music is an
event in time, the next question is: ‘What does a particular piece of music mean to me at
this particular time and place?’
Philosophers have grappled with this question for centuries. In the context of this
discussion of performing, let us turn to E. T. A. Hoffmann (1989), who echoes themes we
have already heard in Rosenblatt’s theory:
I feel then as though I and the music I have heard are as one. I therefore never ask who the
composer was; it seems to me of no importance. It is as though at the greatest intensity
only one psychical entity is in motion, and as though in that sense I have composed many
excellent works myself. (p. 149)
To emphasize Hoffmann’s point: the reader-performer of the score, and/or the listener, plus
the sounds (mental or actual sounds), creates musical meaning. In a sense, listeners take
on the role of ‘creator’ because they are supplying the meaning through their transactions
with the score/sounds. Another way to state this is to say that if music is an event in time,
and if it only exists during a performance, and if a score exists for performers to interpret
and make music from, then musical meaning is very largely the responsibility of the
performer. Moreover, if interpretation is going to take place, then performers should be
aware of the fact that they are sharing with their listeners what they think, believe and feel
about the meanings of a particular score at a particular time and place. Performers have this
power.
Of course, performers of the absolutist persuasion will confine themselves (and their
students) to sounding out a score in a way that is as technically accurate as possible, based
on their understandings of the ‘objective’ notations and the composer’s written directions,
if any. By following and rendering these instructions to the best of their ability, the
underlying belief is that their listeners might find their performance ‘beautiful’.
We can also argue that this kind of absolutist performance fails to count as a musical
interpretation because it is nothing more than an efferent reading of the score (text).
Indeed, and in stark contrast with this kind of efferent reader-performer, the aesthetic
performer (reader) will seek to interpret the score by living through the notated signs and
symbols. In living through the symbols, the aesthetic reader-performer will create a single,
solitary, unique meaning and performance that exists only at one specific time and place. As
Christopher Small (1998) writes:
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[E]ven within a literate musical culture such as the Western classical tradition the exclusive
concentration on musical works and the relegation of the act of performance to subordinate
status has resulted in a severe misunderstanding of what actually takes place during a
performance. That misunderstanding . . . had in turn its effect on the performance itself –
on the experience, that is, of the performance, for both performers and listeners – an effect
that I believe to have been more to impoverish than to enrich it. For performance does not
exist in order to present musical works, but rather, musical works exist in order to give
performers something to perform. (p. 8; italics in original)
This key point can be taken a step further. Performers who accept absolutist views of music
tend to think of their role as ‘subordinate’. Small (1998) explains these views as follows:
‘musical performance is thought of as a one-way system of communication, running from
the composer to individual listener through the medium of the performer’ (p. 47). This way
of thinking moves us backward to the idea that meaning lies in the text alone. As previously
discussed, Rosenblatt argues persuasively that meaning lies in the lived-through experience
of a reader in transaction with a text, not in the text alone. So too with music. It is only
a performer’s actions of interpreting and performing music (i.e. creating and ‘projecting’ a
personal vision of a score) that music can begin to ‘live’ beyond the silent notation of a score.
Through their transactions with a score, performers formulate and instantiate their personal
understanding of what and how a score ‘means’.
Clearly, in order to create an artistic-aesthetic interpretation of a score, performers need
to understand from the outset that they have multi-dimensional responsibilities.
Fundamentally, they must read the score and live through it. When performers have
Rosenblatt’s principles in mind, they do not view themselves as a re-creator, but as
co-creator. The musical score is their point of departure, not arrival. To interpret and express
the meaning of a score, performers must ‘read’ (i.e. perform and listen to performances of)
the musical score both efferently and aesthetically, at all times.
A completely efferent approach will not suffice. The efferent details in a score usually
include such things as notated pitches, harmonic structures, rhythms, metronome markings,
tempo indications, key signatures, time signatures, dynamic indications, and so forth.
Performers study these details and their interactions toward interpreting and performing a
piece. Although some of this information is easily understood and reproduced as part of an
efferent reading, a performer never knows for certain how some musical parameters should
be rendered. For example, how softly should one play a passage marked ‘forte’, or ‘p’, or
‘decrescendo’? And consider this instruction in a score by Debussy that asks the performer
to increase the tempo of a passage as he seeks to play it expressively: ‘Cedez, au mouv’t
expressif, retenu’. Clearly, these are highly relative matters. How a performer decides to
interpret and enact these directions depends on a host of variables in the score and, more
importantly, in the performer’s immediate experience of ‘living’ – of performing – the music,
considered aesthetically, as an unfolding event in time.
Summarizing to this point, while scores include many efferent details, and while these
details direct a performer to take certain musical actions, they cross the border into the
aesthetic realm. A truly ‘comprehensive’ approach to music performing cannot and should
not avoid an aesthetic approach to a score. As Rosenblatt (1994) writes: ‘Only if the reader
turns her attention inward to her experience of “the journey itself,” will a poem happen’
(p. 28). Interpretation is a process of selection. To make meaning through a work of art, a
reader or performer must make choices. This is the key to artistic and aesthetic understanding. Meaning making depends on a host of variables: remembering in relation to
educated understandings, personal experiences, associations, images and activating these
during a performance, thereby creating the personal context from which further meaning
Silverman Musical interpretation 109
will be derived. ‘Awareness – more or less explicit – of repetitions, echoes, resonances,
repercussions, linkages, cumulative effects, contrasts or surprises is the mnemonic matrix for
the structuring of emotion, idea, situation, character, plot – in short, for the evocation of a
work of art’ (Rosenblatt, 1994, pp. 57–58).
So, interpretation is the act of bringing one’s whole being – intellectual, social, cultural,
artistic, physical, emotional and personal – into the performing event. If this is not done, the
result is nothing more than a production; it is merely an aural photocopy of a score.
Conversely, without careful attention and study of a score, a performer will offer little more
than pure subjectivity. Artistic-aesthetic interpreting depends on the continuous interplay of
efferent and aesthetic processes.
Pianist and critic Charles Rosen (2002) affirms the crucial distinction between efferent
and aesthetic reading processes:
In difficult passages . . . the problem is to disentangle the mind and allow the body to take
over on its own. This is certainly why Liszt advised his students to read a book while
practicing, as Moriz Rosenthal reported . . . a provisional decision must be made about the
interpretation, and the hands learn to play the passage without any further interference
from the taste or intelligence of the pianist. Then, at last, the interpretation can be refined.
(p. 39)
Josef Hofmann (1976) agrees. During his studies with Anton Rubinstein, he recalls the
Maestro offering this advice: ‘Just play first exactly what is written; if you have done full
justice to it and then still feel like adding or changing anything, why, do so’ (p. 55).
Rosenblatt (1994) adds that there is not a strict dichotomy between the two stances
in forming interpretations. During the process of interpretation, the reader or performer
works along a continuum in which their consciousness selects the appropriate mode of
analyzing:
We do not have the cognitive, the referential, the factual, the analytic, the abstract on the
one side and the affective, the emotive, the sensuous, on the other. Instead, both aspects of
meaning – which might be termed the public and the private – are always present in our
transactions with the world. The difference lies in the mix – the proportion of the public and
the private, cognitive and affective aspects of meaning – attended to during a reading. In
readings that fall somewhere in the efferent half of the continuum, the reader selects our
predominantly more public than private elements. The aesthetic stance, in contrast, accords
predominantly more attention to the penumbra of private feelings, attitudes, sensations,
and ideas than to the public aspects. (p. 184)
Nicholas Karolides (2000) concurs: ‘Potentially, there are readings at either extreme end of
the aesthetic-efferent continuum’ (p. 11). But he acknowledges that readers are more likely
to blend the two stances, depending on the situation. We can apply this idea to the
interpretation of a score. Because music is an event in time, the circumstances surrounding
the event greatly influence the interpretation: for example, performers may play more freely
in the comfort of their home than in a concert hall, or at a competition. Then again, perhaps
not, as Rosen (2002) observes: ‘Playing in public is not the most nerve-wracking form
of performance: playing for one or two friends who are musicians can be even more
frightening’ (p. 138). Rosenblatt (1994) makes the point in different words:
. . . as the reader draws upon her past life for the substance from which, under the
guidance of the textual signs, to build up the work, special and sometimes tangential
preoccupations, preconceptions, and misconceptions emerge. Such intrusions may interrupt
110 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MUSIC EDUCATION 25(2)
the experience, and even when recognized as irrelevant to the text, may still provide
overtones, diversions, interruptions, that diminish the wholeness and integrity of the
experience. (p. 38)
Thus, many circumstances, both exterior and interior, can radically alter an interpretation
and therefore change the meaning evoked through one’s transaction with a score. Extreme
nervousness might cause a performer to hold tightly to efferent details; a personal history
of standing ovations might give another performer the confidence needed to play in a more
personal, reflective or individualistic way and, therefore, to focus and perform deeply in the
aesthetic mode. The degree of blending of these two modes, or the extent to which a reader
or performer moves back and forth along the spectrum between these modes, is not only
different from situation to situation, but from person to person, and time to time, even
when performing the same musical works.
Before leaving this part of the discussion, let me consider briefly what the above ideas
might mean for a recent example of the ‘interpretation dilemma’: the so-called Early Music
Movement. Many university music professors and students have been heavily engaged in
this movement in recent years. Like John Eliot Gardiner and Malcolm Bilson, numerous
university music programs engage students in performing classical music repertoire on
authentic, period instruments, trying to recapture the ways in which the music of the past
was actually performed.
However, Richard Taruskin (1995) contends that ‘Early Music is just the late twentieth
century’s way of adapting past music to present taste’ (p. 16). Roger Scruton (1999) agrees:
‘Glenn Gould’s performances of Bach are far removed from any that would be
countenanced by the “early music” specialists: but they are animated by the intention to be
true to Bach’s musical inspiration’ (p. 444). In other words, we can never get back to the
‘real’ performing and listening of the 18th or 19th century. ‘The range of potential
responses and the gamut of degrees of intensity and articulateness are infinitely vast, since
they depend not only on the character of the text but even more on the special character of
the individual reader’ (Rosenblatt, 1994, p. 49).
Final reflections
What can musicians, teachers and listeners gain from the viewpoints expressed above? How
are these philosophical tools useful for artist-teachers and their students?
First, on a conceptual level, I suggest it is crucial to enlighten all students – performers,
listeners, composers, music educators – about the various views that scholars and
performers hold about the nature of music performing and interpretation. Knowing these
stances, performers ‘have permission’ to develop their own ways and means of forming an
individualistic musical work of art. I have made it a point to note a number of readings for
teachers’ consideration, but there are many more views along the spectrum of views on
performance-interpretation that teachers may wish to consult and summarize for students’
consideration (e.g. Chaffin & Lemieux, 2004; Davidson, 2002; Davies, 2003, 2004a;
Godlovitch, 1998; Partington, 1995; Samson, 2000; Sparshott, 1982; Talbot, 2000). It is
worth noting, however, that most contemporary sources support the view that it is not
sufficient to educate performers as good or excellent sound-producers. Students must
reflect critically on the various levels of meaning in the musical works they are interpreting
and performing before, during and after they make and listen to their music, as Elliott
(1995, pp. 62–63; 98–99), for example, emphasizes.
Silverman Musical interpretation 111
Second, performers need to consider the nature of musical works. What is ‘in’ a musical
work to be expressed, communicated or conveyed to an audience? Here, too, there are a
variety of views on the nature of musical works, along a continuum ranging from the
absolute formalist, to the absolute expressionist, to the referentialist, to the praxialist
concept. Arguably, the praxialist view (Elliott, 1995) is the most comprehensive view because
it admits a wide range of meanings that traditional (modernist) writers in music and music
education have deemed nonmusical. Bowman (2005) agrees:
. . . the praxial view is not so much an alternative music philosophy as a dramatic effort to
redefine the traditional bounds of music philosophical discourse. Clearly, the praxial turn
draws into the ‘musical’ fold much that conventional thought has strived to lock outside.
(p. 56)
Third, Rosenblatt (1995) emphasizes the importance of teachers introducing certain texts
at certain times. She states: ‘Too often . . . the classics are introduced to children at an age
(or to adults at a stage) when it is impossible for them to feel in any personal way the
problems or the conflicts treated’ (p. 206). The same holds true for music. Knowing when
to introduce the works of certain composers is vital. Pianist Claudio Arrau studied with
Martin Krause, who was a student of Franz Liszt. Krause believed in planned development.
He was against beginners playing Mozart concertos, and he held that Schumann should not
be taught early in a pianist’s development. He would teach Hummel and Moscheles before
Beethoven (Horowitz, 1992, pp. 40–41).
Often, performance teachers do not teach this way. They ‘cram’ the classics into students’
fingers and heads when it is too soon for them to grasp all the inner complexities and subtleties of major works. Indeed, if a teacher introduces certain scores to students at times when
they are not able to feel any personal affiliation to them, how can they truly interpret these
scores? If interpretation is the constant interplay between the efferent and the aesthetic, and
the aesthetic mode has much to do with personal selections, then it seems improper for a
teacher to force students to interpret something before they are ready to do so.
Related to the above considerations is the need for performance teachers to view
themselves as musicians and educators, not just performing artists. We have all witnessed
the case of students who complain, rightly, that their teacher is a fine performer, but one
who cannot or does not want to teach. In short, enabling students to find their ‘own voice’
as performers requires performance teachers who respect and develop the rich
amalgamation of knowings and sensitivities that Elliott (1995) calls ‘educatorship’:
Educatorship is another kind of working understanding. It is not a skill, nor a habit, nor a
knack, nor a science, nor a collection of facts about educational psychology or philosophy.
Educatorship is the flexible, situated knowledge that allows one to think-in-action in relation
to students’ needs, subject matter criteria, community needs, and the professional standards
that apply to each of these. (p. 252)
At this point, it is important to connect what I have said about ‘reading’, performing and
listening to the broader issue of democratic teaching, which is a theme that Rosenblatt’s
transactional theory shares with the educational theories of John Dewey, her colleague and
contemporary (see, for example, Dewey & Bentley, 1949). The thrust of Rosenblatt’s view is
captured in this passage:
‘Democracy,’ as Dewey said, ‘will have its consummation when free social inquiry is wedded
to the art of full and moving communication’ (Public, p. 350). Such a vision of our role can
free us from the polarities of academic and political debate and inspire a fruitful meeting of
the minds . . . (Rosenblatt, 1994, p. 188)
112 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MUSIC EDUCATION 25(2)
When teachers dictate ‘interpretations’ to their students, they prevent students from
forming personal bonds with a musical score. To use a literary parallel, although someone
else can read a text efferently for us and acceptably paraphrase its meaning, no one can read
aesthetically for us – that is, experience the evocation of – a novel or poem. If students and
performers accept the view that they have some degree of responsibility for creating
meaning through their own evocation of the musical work of art (the degree of responsibility will depend on each person’s ‘philosophy’ of interpreting and performing, of course),
then they will free themselves from the old formalistic ideology that reduces performers and
performing to the bloodless sounding-out of visual notations. Doing so will allow teachers
to grant students the freedom to find and express musical meaning through their personal,
aesthetic transactions with scores, rather than dictate to a student how an interpretation
should be formed.
Rosen (2002) advocates an approach to educating pianists that embodies Rosenblatt’s
principles:
The greatest teacher does not impose an interpretation but tries to find the way the student
wishes to play and to improve the effectiveness of the interpretation. This is psychologically
difficult for any teacher, who has naturally developed a set idea of the proper style of
playing and of the correct interpretation, and the temptation to force this on every student
can be overwhelming. Trying to let the student’s personality reveal itself demands a
renunciation on the part of the teacher, even sometimes an abdication of taste and of the
legitimate prejudices and wisdom of a lifetime. (p. 109)2
Hofmann (1976) supports Rosen’s position in these words about his famous teacher Anton
Rubinstein:
He explained, analyzed, elucidated everything that he wanted me to know; but, this done,
he left me to my own judgment, for only then, he would explain, would my achievement be
my own and incontestable property. I learned from Rubinstein in this way the valuable truth
that the conception of tone-pictures obtained through the playing of another gives us only
transient impressions; they come and go, while the self-created conception will last and
remain our own. (p. 64)
I suggest that the lack of musical individuality, originality and creativity that I and perhaps
many other listeners often experience when listening to live and recorded performances
stems mainly from the kind of conservatory ‘drilling’ traditions and competition procedures
that exclude the personhood and personality of student performers.
To my ears, many of today’s so-called ‘great pianists’ sound the same, as if they had been
stamped out on an assembly line. In the course of attending a wide variety of classical
performances, my personal experience as a critic and avid listener over many years has been
disappointing. Based on what I have been suggesting here, the reason is that, over and over,
venues like Carnegie Hall (for example) present pianists (for example) who have nothing
personal to ‘say’. Over and over, year after year, one after the other, each one produces more
or less the same ‘copy’ of the same piano repertoire.
Sadly, listeners who cannot tell the difference merely assume that a performance is ‘great’
because the musician in question has ‘made it’ to Carnegie Hall. True, in order to appear at
this venue a musician must be technically adept. But as I have been arguing throughout this
discussion, technically perfect efferent readings and performances are not satisfying because
they fall short of what educated and sensitive listeners want to hear. I suspect that many
uninformed listeners recognize and feel this lack of aesthetic satisfaction. But because they
lack basic concepts and distinctions of the sort that Rosenblatt offers, not to mention an
Silverman Musical interpretation 113
awareness of the many dimensions of musical meaning that musical works can communicate, as Elliott, for example, explains (1995, pp. 199–201), these listeners do not know
when and how they are being taken advantage of. Thus, they pay ‘top price’ to hear the
‘classical artist of the month’ play (say) Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata. And while they
may feel involved or ‘moved’ enough in the concert to participate in a standing ovation for
the so-called ‘great’ artist, in many cases this is not deserved. Moreover, perhaps the
difficulties that classical music organizations are facing today has something to do with
performers producing aural photocopies of scores, instead of creating (or being educated
to create) original performances.
For the sake of preserving and advancing the best aspects of western classical music
performance, I believe it is incumbent upon teachers, critics and scholars to make certain
that students and listeners can distinguish between the interpreting artist and the mere
translator. Indeed, listeners have a right to know what to expect and how to judge performances accordingly.
When teachers impose rigid, pre-established models of performing, they do a disservice
to the field of performance; they compromise the aesthetic and artistic nature of musical
performance. Becoming a copy of one’s ‘great’ teacher, or molding oneself to a recorded
performance by a famous player who has won competitions might secure a performer a
career position. But is this kind of music-maker really a performing ‘artist’, or just a ‘musicnotation processor’? In Great Pianists, Rudolf Ganz (1999) offers his view:
with that kind of practice and very arbitrary courses of study the pupil was able to do a
certain number of set tasks and nothing else. There was not enough musical or pianistic
culture. The pupils were a manufactured product and little else. Like all fabricated
contrivances, they were limited to one set of operations and lacked independence . . .
Indeed, the training of some teachers and some schools was so arbitrary that it was easily
possible for an acute observer to determine the identity of the teacher by hearing a pupil
play a given work. I know of one teacher whose pupils play a certain Beethoven sonata so
much after the same fashion that one might think that they had swallowed the same pianoplayer roll, and that the perforations were going through their automatic intellects with the
same mechanical precision that they would through a piano-player. It seemed to be a case
of making pupils out of would-be-young-artists instead of making young artists out of
pupils . . . (pp. 311–312; italics in original)
It seems fair to say that a preoccupation with what ‘should be’ can lead a teacher to
neglect their students’ basic democratic freedoms. Living and working in a democratic
context requires that people exercise their freedoms in relation to moral and ethical
responsibilities. This is as true in artistic subjects as in any other domain. On one hand, a
complete neglect of what ‘should be’ in art takes us to an extreme – a loss of morality. On
the other hand, artistic creation thrives on individual freedom of expression within bounds
(from rigid to generous). In other words, there needs to be a balance between extremes of
freedom and immorality in art. One of the greatest examples of this balance in art was
Beethoven, who severed connections with classical form – to a greater degree (perhaps)
than most true Romantics. Still, he was a passionate advocate for moral values in art. He
believed that art ought to be used as a tool for the expression of what humanity should
aspire to be. A prime example of bringing these two elements into cohesion is found in
Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, particularly Chapter 8, which is dedicated to Beethoven’s
last Sonata, Op. 111. Mann (1999) writes: ‘Beethoven’s art had overgrown itself, risen out
of the habitable regions of tradition, even before the startled gaze of human eyes, into
spheres of the entirely and utterly and nothing-but personal’ (p. 52). Mann observes that
Beethoven’s late works, even though they break the rules and regulations of ‘classical form’,
114 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MUSIC EDUCATION 25(2)
are an ‘effect more majestic and awful than any reckless plunge into the personal’ (p. 53).
Claude Debussy (1977) makes a similar point in La Revue blanche:
Beethoven’s real lesson to us was not that we should preserve age-old forms, nor even that
we should plant our footsteps where he first trod. We should look out through open
windows into clear skies. Many people appear to have closed them, seemingly for good;
those successful so-called geniuses should have no excuse for their academic contrapuntal
exercises, which are called (out of habit) ‘symphonies’. (p. 15)
A major internal struggle interpreters must confront is the struggle between their
individualistic impulse to explore freedom and to limit this freedom according to the
musically ethical values inside themselves. Interpreters must live through the score to find
their own unique meaning, but they should, simultaneously, respect the score. Achieving
this balance in one performance (let alone in many performances) marks the artistry and
personal stature of the artist.
The next issue concerns when to encourage students to begin interpreting a score: after
they have mastered the efferent details, or from the outset of their performing and
practicing? Here again, there is a range of views. Based on some sources I have reviewed
here, a performer should read more or less efferently before aesthetically living-through the
score and developing meaning. Once a score becomes ingrained in one’s subconscious, the
aesthetic mode of reading takes precedence over the efferent during the act of an interpretive performance. Rubinstein agrees with this sequence – recall his advice to Hofmann,
cited above: ‘Just play exactly what is written’, and then add or change things as one sees
fit.
However, this advice seems to run counter to Rosenblatt’s belief about the need to ‘read’
a text or score with a blend of efferent and aesthetic stances and infuse education with
democratic principles. This view accords with Elliott’s perspective (1995, p. 219). He
challenges the assumption voiced by some music educators and laypeople that performing
and ‘creating’ are distinct, such that performing can never be creative, only ‘re-creative’.
Elliott argues, instead, that in western classical music (and many other styles) there are two
works of art: the composed work (notated in a score) and the artistic-creative ‘work’ of
performers who integrate their understandings of the work with their sense of musical
ethics and obligations – artistic, moral, social and so forth – such that a unique, personal
instantiation of the work is created (Elliott, 1995, pp. 167–168). Consequently, Elliott
discusses a variety of strategies (p. 234) that music students of all kinds can learn and
employ from the outset of their performing, improvising, composing and arranging. He
believes these creative strategies should be part of all students’ musicianship and ‘listenership’ (Elliott’s term, p. 94). Since Elliott is concerned with enabling all students to engage
in music-making (of all kinds) and listening as part of learning to ‘make a life’ (as opposed
to ‘making a living’ in music as professionals), a studio teacher preparing professional
performers might challenge Elliott’s view. However, one might also argue that if students
were taught according to Elliott’s guidelines from their earliest years, then it would be more
likely that students who did choose to pursue a professional performing career would be the
kind of ‘reflective’ and creative practitioners with the dispositions, abilities and insights
needed to create the kinds of efferent-aesthetic performances that I, for one, often fail to
hear at Carnegie Hall.
For the sake of advancing musical performing, I believe we should educate performers
(and all music students) more holistically and comprehensively than music institutions have
tended to do in the recent past. Specifically, future performers need to ‘know-about’ and
‘know-how’ to balance the efferent and aesthetic requirements and opportunities presented
Silverman Musical interpretation 115
by works of western classical music. They need opportunities to reflect critically on their
options regarding interpretive freedom and their musical-ethical obligations to listeners,
composers and scores. Clearly, all of this requires far more than the cultivation and mastery
of technique.
Following Rosenblatt’s theory, and similar views proffered by some music and music
education philosophers, I suggest that teaching music performers (composers, conductors)
and listeners (of whatever age, ambition or level) would benefit positively by replacing
absolutist notions of music with multidimensional concepts of the processes and products
of music-making, by teaching students to think critically about how they are being taught
and what others recommend about (say) ‘authentic modes’ of performing, and by emphasizing creative strategies from the outset of music performance education. In addition,
everything I have discussed thus far points to the importance of placing students’ selfhood
at the center of the teaching–learning process. By this I mean that our students might be
more fully prepared and self-fulfilled if we encourage them to value and reflect on who they
are – individually, artistically and socially. Perhaps these suggestions will be useful toward
empowering our students to reveal themselves through the music they perform.
Notes
1. Rosenblatt is quoting Aaron Copland (1952), pp. 50–66. Copland makes additional points. He writes:
‘All questions of interpretation sooner or later resolve themselves into a discussion of how faithful the
performer ought to be to the notes themselves. No sooner do we ask this than a counterquestion
suggests itself: how faithful are composers to the notes they themselves put down?’ (p. 59).
2. Rosen continues: ‘Once when I refused to play a piece the way my teacher, Hedwig Kanner-Rosenthal,
thought it should be done, she said, “All right, play it your way, but at least make it sound beautiful,”
and then she proceeded to help me do just that. Not many teachers, not even some of the finest,
would show such a tolerant breadth of spirit.’
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Marissa Silverman is an Adjunct Professor of Music and Music Education at New York
University and a secondary school teacher at Long Island City High School in Queens,
New York. At Long Island City High School she teaches English literature, music, and
interdisciplinary courses crossing both departments. Her publications have appeared in
the New York Times and academic journals, and she has also edited a collection of short
stories. As a professional flautist, Dr Silverman has performed concert-lectures at
universities and conservatories around North America. Her research interests include:
music education philosophy, musical interpretation, 19th-century performance practice,
literary theory and criticism, and interdisciplinary curriculum development.
Address: Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions, 35 West Fourth Street,
Suite 777, New York, NY 10012, USA. [email: [email protected]]
Abstracts
Interprétation musicale: questions philosophiques et pratiques
Ce papier construit une perspective interdisciplinaire sur la nature de la performance
classique occidentale en combinant des concepts issus de la littérature théorique, de la
philosophie de la musique et de la philosophie de l’éducation de la musique. Le papier
conclut avec des propositions pratiques pour l’éducation des interprètes musicaux.
Silverman Musical interpretation 117
Musikalische Interpretation: philosophische und praktische Gesichtspunkte
Der Artikel entwirft eine interdisziplinäre Perspektive auf westliche klassische Musik, indem
Ansätze der Literaturtheorie, der Musikphilosophie und der Musikerziehung miteinander
verbunden werden. Der Beitrag schließt mit praktischen Vorschlägen zur Ausbildung von
Musikern.
Interpretación musical: temas filosóficos y prácticos
Este trabajo construye una perspectiva interdisciplinaria sobre la naturaleza de la ejecución
de la música clásica occidental, combinando conceptos de la teoría literaria, de la filosofía
musical y de la filosofía de la educación musical. El trabajo concluye con propuestas
prácticas para la educación de los ejecutantes de música.
International Society for Music Education (ISME)
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